Tag: Disease awareness

The importance of annual reviews for COPD care

Man at COPD review

Currently, there are considerable gaps in the care of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Parris Williams, PhD student at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), highlights why improving the access, delivery and quality of annual COPD reviews is crucial to supporting 1.4 million patients in the UK with the condition.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a chronic condition causing restricted airflow and breathing problems, is the second most common lung disease in the UK. Currently 1.4 million people in the UK have a COPD diagnosis. Recommended by the British Thoracic Society and NICE guidelines, annual COPD reviews are a key element in COPD care. These reviews are an opportunity for the patient to discuss their condition with their medical team, alongside inhaler/medication revisions and opportunities for onward referrals if needed. When delivered correctly, COPD annual reviews increase the health and reduce exacerbation risk for patients.

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Bladder problems: Can we be less shy about having a pee?

Prof Marcus Drake

Bladder problems affect millions of people around the world, yet they remain shrouded in silence and embarrassment. Professor Marcus Drake, Chair in Neurological Urology, explores why society continues to be shy about this topic, and highlights why more medical research is needed to improve bladder care.

People do not generally spend a lot of time thinking about their bladder. After all, each pee only takes about 20 seconds. Since we might go for a pee just six times a day, that means only a couple of minutes are given over to the bladder daily.

As well as not thinking about it much, we also seem to be reluctant to talk about it. This may be a reflection on society, since peeing is a vital function yet talking about it seems to be discouraged. Perhaps this does not matter so much for most people. But it does matter for anyone with a bladder problem. This reluctance means that people can leave it very late to get help. For many it makes the experience of getting help difficult too.

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Closing the Gender Health Gap: A Call for Sex and Gender Equity in Biomedical Research Policies

When it comes to healthcare, there are clear and stark inequalities between women and men. Marina Politis, Alice Witt, and Kate Womersley explain how, at its root, this gender health gap derives from a research and data gap, and how the MESSAGE project is working to improve accounting of sex and gender dimensions in medical research.

Everyone aspires to receive gold standard treatment when seeking medical care. What if, however, this standard, was only ever set out to be gold for one group of people? Much of our medical evidence base has been based on a male norm, with women underrepresented at all stages of the research pipeline. Subsequently, when a woman suffers an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, she is less likely to receive bystander CPR than a man. Once in the hospital, she continues to be less likely to receive optimal care than her male counterpart.

The gender health gap in cardiovascular disease – poorer outcomes women experience due to the “male default” in health research and healthcare – is just one of many conditions for which there are disparities between women and men. From dementia to diabetes, and osteoporosis to obesity, sex and gender differences and similarities remain neglected in UK and international research.

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Tackling syncope – a significant diagnostic challenge for many

Syncope–a transient loss of consciousness–occurs in 42% of people by the age of 70. Professor Richard Sutton, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Cardiology, discusses this common medical problem, and how he has pioneered a “true but still insufficiently small interest” in it.

I have been Emeritus Professor of Clinical Cardiology at Imperial since 2011. Prior to that, I had trained in Cardiology at St George’s Hospital, the University of North Carolina, and the National Heart Hospital in London, becoming Consultant Cardiologist at Westminster Hospital in 1976. There I focused on cardiac pacing as a subspecialty. From a clinical perspective, cardiac pacing eradicated syncope (transient loss of consciousness) in patients with conduction tissue disease of the heart. So, I sought to extend the role of pacing into related syncope conditions.

My primary interest therefore became the symptom of syncope. I began this in the late 1970s, and formed a close relationship with Worthing Hospital which carried a heavy load of older patients, many of whom presented syncope. I founded an outreach clinic at Worthing which led to the receipt of many challenging patients with syncope in whom there was no obvious cause.

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Margaret Turner Warwick Centre: Can we take your breath away?

The Great Exhibition Road Festival is a free annual celebration of science and the arts each summer in South Kensington. The event showcases a diverse range of activities for people of all ages.  One of those activities, led by researchers from the Margaret Turner Warwick Centre and volunteers from the charity Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis, included an interactive activity that gave the public the opportunity to walk in the shoes of someone living with pulmonary fibrosis. Find out first-hand from Elisabeth Pyman, what happened on the day and hear from pulomary fibrosis patient, Andy, what it’s like to live with the condition.

The June weekend of the Great Exhibition Road Festival was one of quintessential British summertime weather. This celebration of science was hosted by Imperial College London in collaboration with the local community and provided a wide range of topics for people of all ages to explore. Under intermittent spells of rain, crowds of a multitudinous diversity explored the “awe and wonder” of science, the theme of this year’s festival. To welcome the public, artists and scientists populated the streets and buildings surrounding Imperial’s South Kensington campus like a sudden desert bloom.

Meanwhile, another transformation was taking place in a stand tucked away at the end of the road in the Creative Science zone. Researchers from the Margaret Turner Warwick Centre and volunteers from the charity Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis were on a mission to spread awareness about a rare lung condition known as pulmonary fibrosis. This condition is associated with a build-up of scar tissue that leads to a steady decline in lung function, with many patients becoming terminal only five years after diagnosis. Currently, there are 32,500 UK residents living with a diagnosis, but the actual number of people affected is estimated at around 100,000.

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My day in the living lab: Could I help accelerate drug trials?

Rory-Cellan-Jones

Rory Cellan-Jones is an author and former BBC Technology Correspondent who, in 2019, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Rory discusses his visit to the ‘Living Lab’ at the UK DRI Care Research & Technology Centre – a unique mock apartment where scientists can monitor the behaviour of patients in a domestic environment.

My week started with quite a stressful day. For nearly five hours I was under the microscope, my every move watched by scientists. They made me walk up and down, rise from a chair without using my arms, open and close my hand rapidly. I spent half an hour staring at a computer screen trying to work out which shape fitted where on a grid, one of a number of cognition tests. They even made me make two cups of tea and four slices of toast.

It was tiring but it was all in the cause of science – and potentially faster drug trials. This all took place in Imperial College’s Living Lab, a room fitted out like a small flat on the ninth floor of a tower block in West London. The lab is equipped with video cameras and a series of sensors which provide data on its occupants’ activities.

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Targeting both incretin receptors together for a new generation of diabetes therapies

Close up of woman's hands checking blood sugar level using glucose meter

Dr Alejandra Tomas, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, explores new and emerging incretin-based therapies for managing diabetes.

Diabetes is a disease that has reached epidemic proportions, with millions of people dying or suffering from a myriad of associated complications. Given that cases are projected to increase worldwide over the coming decades – especially in low- and middle-income countries – there is an urgent need to develop and deploy effective treatments for the disease.

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Alzheimer’s disease: why your genes aren’t always your destiny

For Dementia Action Week, Kitty Murphy, second year PhD student at the UK DRI Centre at Imperial, shares the complex nature of Alzheimer’s disease and why there’s more to it than just our genes.

Dementia diagnosis rates are dropping for the first time ever. I wish I could tell you that this is due to less people developing dementia, and not because more people are living with it undiagnosed. According to research carried out by Alzheimer’s Society, many people are not being diagnosed due to the misconception that memory loss is a normal part of aging. However, memory loss is often an early sign of dementia, particularly in the most common cause known as Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, the Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Action Week, an annual awareness campaign, has made diagnosis their featured theme.

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From bench to bedside and back again in mesothelioma

On Mesothelioma Awareness Day, Dr Anca Nastase provides an insight into mesothelioma and how research advances offer new hope for improved treatment.

Mesothelioma Awareness Day represents a great opportunity to gain more information about the disease biology, risk factors or symptoms from everyone in the mesothelioma community. Raising awareness is essential as it has the potential to improve prevention and early diagnosis and can translate into better outcomes and better survival for the patients.

My aim as a scientist within the National Centre for Mesothelioma Research (NCMR) is to deepen the molecular research in mesothelioma and to advance our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the onset and progression of this disease.

Although progress has been made in the field, further understanding of the pathophysiology is still desperately needed.

Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that arises and develops in the thin layer that covers the human internal organs, called mesothelium.

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The Asbestos Story: a tale of public health and politics

The Asbestos Story: a tale of public health and politicsAn eye-opening account by Professor Sir Tony Newman Taylor on how asbestos has gone from ‘magic mineral’ to deadly dust that can cause mesothelioma.

Public awareness of the hazards of asbestos can be dated to the period immediately following the death of Nellie Kershaw aged 33 in 1924.  She had worked during the previous seven years in a textile factory spinning asbestos fibre into yarn. She died of severe fibrosis of the lungs. The pathologist, William Cooke, who found retained asbestos fibres in the lungs, called the cause of death asbestosis.  Nellie Kershaw was not the first case to be reported of lung fibrosis caused by asbestos. Montague Murray in 1899 had reported the case of a 33-year-old man who had worked for 14 years in an asbestos textile factory. He had died of fibrosis of the lungs which Montague Murray, also finding asbestos in the lungs, had attributed to inhaled asbestos fibres.  The patient had told Murray he was the only survivor from ten others who had worked in his workshop. (more…)